


After the Climb

by Ewok_Poet



Series: Anjie Mencuri stories [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Abstinence, Drugs, Gen, spice use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-10-08 19:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10394751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ewok_Poet/pseuds/Ewok_Poet
Summary: Anjie Mencuri appears sure of his re-stabilised hyperlane through the fame and tight scrutiny. But is he?





	

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This is the companion piece to the previous story in this thread, [_Before the Fall_](http://%5Bi%5DBefore%20the%20Fall%5B/i%5D) and it's my response to the [Bring Back the OC Revolution Spring 2016 Challenge, kindly provided by @leiamoody:](http://boards.theforce.net/threads/bring-back-the-oc-revolution-spring-challenge-extended-deadline-and-moments-of-crucial-decision.50004117/page-27#post-53084339)  
>   
>  _Write about a character who is normally always busy doing nothing (i.e. something that is essential for daily survival but not life-altering; ex. Doing laundry). This can be a brief moment of downtime during an otherwise busy day, or someone who is undergoing a long period of inactivity. The writer can decide if their character is happy/unhappy with this state._  
>   
>  I think I totally missed the topic here and/or went on about it with too much artistic freedom.

_I never learn_  
_And I never will_  
_Everything that saved me_  
_Is the same thing that kills_  
  
_I never grow_  
_I never know_  
_I am never the one_  
_I thought I would be_  
  
"Kriff this!" He told himself.  
  
This was the first song that was coming to him in a long time and it did not seem quite right. Did the netherworldly ones want him to change the way he was approaching his artistry? He was used to words racing through his mind and just ending up on a sheet or flimsi like that. The words that failed him were never to become songs, he knew he would have never looked at them again. It always seemed to him that they wanted to be unleashed, set free, sent to some other place, for somebody else to make use of them. After all, the artists were not the owners of their art - it was all there, waiting to be borrowed from the vacuum of space, the endless, warm void, cold to those who did not know how to forage the way he did.  
  
When he was young, he used to think that music was divine. So did many others, but he truly and honestly believed it from the very first verse, the very first note. He would often outright reject the idea that there was such a thing as a happy poet or a lyricist. Happy people were blinded by the wrong kind of light, they could not truly see. The flimsi in front of them were blank. No single ibbot quill, no single stylus could find the way through that maze of blindness. Unlike these deluded beings, those with a dark edge to their hearts and souls, they saw beauty where everybody else saw tragedy. They could open their eyes further than what it really looked like!  
  
And he was, too, attracted to sad things. Sometimes even his own sadness.  
  
Sometimes, but not now.  
  
The thick-framed spectacles were sitting on the desk next to him, like a companion avian and very much teasing him in a way one such being would. For somebody who often felt he could see through times past and days to come, he was useless without those spectacles here and now. How ironic, for a half-Hapan to even think about a more advanced vision. He was technically blind at night and the voids he dreamed so much of were nothing but eternal night sowing the seeds of celestial bodies.  
  
_I never am_  
_I never do..._  
  
"I never do what?"  
  
Is that what sobriety was always like? With no bursts of inspiration, not leading anywhere?  
  
"Why don't you just do it and quit kriffin' moaning?"  
  
"It's all right if you fail again."  
  
He heard both of these countless times and he was sick of them.  
  
"You are too weak. You have lost your magic touch. You cannot keep up with the tempo you have stubbornly imposed on yourself. It's never going to be the same again. You are half of a man. A de-crescent moon of a man."  
  
That was most certainly not his own subconscious speaking, that was a whole constellation-worth of fears. But the more the outside world was feeding them to his mind, the more they took the shape od something more lyrical, something he liked as much as he hated it.  
  
"You are a spice-addled wermo."  
  
No, he wasn't. Yes, he had been. He replaced spice with his own take on the Force and the Universe, hand-tailored from about any denomination he could think of. The Jedi. The Sith. The Nightsisters. The Soulism of Aurea. The former Church or the Blind that allegedly existed in the ancient city of Taliore on Vagran. Cosmic Balance. The Light Spirit. As long as there was something giving him comfort, he was ready to embrace it.  
  
Comforting too was the starlit night. Unlike the _others_ , he was at his best when no other being was awake.  
  


...

  
He woke up and the bed was way too warm. He was not sure what time of the day it was, but it was not like he cared in the first place. The dream where he hated himself could have as well been reality, but he did not care about that, either. That other Anjie Mencuri, the one trapped behind his eyelids, he had surely come up with a good idea for lyrics when he was angry with himself.  
  
Could he remember the words? He grabbed a stylus and a sheet of flimsi.  
  
_I never learn_  
_And I never will_  
_Everything that saved me_  
_Is the same thing that kills_  
  
_I never grow_  
_I never know_  
_I am never the one_  
_I thought I would be_  
  
He reached deep within, but the voices blasting judgement were silent. There were days when it was hard to silence them, but luckily, this was not one of those. This was the day when they were stuck on the other side.  
  
He looked at the words again. He liked how they sounded. He liked the loose structure.  
  
_Perhaps this version of life was not that bad at all._

**Author's Note:**

> Church of the Blind is some upcoming fanon, which I based on one of @Briannakin's prompts for the June 2016 Word Race.


End file.
